Posts tagged ‘retinal degeneration’

In May 2017, the Leung lab visited several collaborating groups in Asia and shared with them our research vision on using zebrafish to find new drugs for retinal degeneration. In this blog post, we will share some pictures of our visit to the Department of Ophthalmology at the Osaka University School of Medicine. We met our long-term collaborator Dr. Motokazu Tsujikawa. He is a co-mentor of Logan Ganzen, a graduate student in our laboratory. Logan is a recipient of the predoctoral award from the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. During our Osaka trip, he presented a talk entitled “Visual Motor Response of a Transgenic Retinitis Pigmentosa Zebrafish Model” to Dr. Tsujikawa.

Logan in front of a new Center for Medical Innovation and Translational Research.

Fai and Dr. Motokazu in his zebrafish facility in the Center of Medical Innovation and Translational Research.

The Center is beautifully designed with lots of open space.

Logan presented his latest findings to Dr. Motokazu, who served as a co-mentor in Logan’s CTSI predoctoral fellowship.

We also visited the daily operation of the ophthalmology clinic and Osaka University Hospital, and participated in the grand rounds of the local ophthalmologists. We experienced firsthand the passion of translational research from our Japanese colleagues.

Entrance hall of the medical building

A panoramic view at the top floor of the hospital.

We joined the grand rounds of the local ophthalmologists. Dr. Kohji Nishida welcomed the group and gave an opening speech. Even though we did not speak Japanese, we witnessed their passion to improve clinical service through research.

Needless to say, we were also well-fed by Dr. Tsujikawa with the finest Japanese food, and took some time to visit Kyoto, a magnificent ancient city.

I first came across this approach through this youtube video. It shows how the approach helped a lady who suffered from Stargardt’s disease and could not see well for eight years.

After using the app and google cardboard, she seemed to see much better and was so excited by the experience. I find this interesting because many of my friends and relatives suffered from poor vision. They can potentially see better through this simple and cheap approach. I am going to set this up for my parents soon and see if that helps them see better!

Prof. Zhengli Yang, the vice president of the hospital and the director of Center for Human Molecular Biology & Genetics, invited both me and a renowned eye geneticist Prof. Shomi Bhattacharya to discuss our current research on eye disease therapy. I discussed how my lab is setting up the foundation to use zebrafish to screen eye drugs at Purdue. Prof. Bhattacharya discussed his work on gene therapy and stem cell therapy. It was a great experience to interact with a world leader in genetics whom discovered many of the key genes in retinal degeneration, and a top notch research institution in China.

I outlined our approach on using simple visual behaviour assays to identify positive effects of drugs. I specifically emphasized on the potential to analyze many of traditional Chinese medicines; the treasure that we have been consuming for generations. Some of these possibilities are outlined in our recent review paper:

The interaction with the students was fantastic. They were very imaginative and eager to ask questions all the time! Their enthusiasm was infectious and is the driving force of scientific progress. That also reminded me of the problem of our education in stifling creativity when students are “educated”, which I wrote in a separate post recently.

This is truly an enjoyable experience and I look forward to visiting them again soon!